Star and Pokeball Blankets

Yeah, yeah, it's been about 8 months since I've posted here. I am noticing the coincidence that I'm always in the mood (or remember) to post in my blog around the Fall and Winter months, but my activities doing other things don't stop. So, I guess it's time to play catch up before I go on another hiatus.

Most recent projects are these crocheted blankets I made my boys for Christmas. Poor kids have been watching me knit and crochet their whole lives and I'm finally getting around to this but, I know they'll love them.

The star one I give credit to a pattern, but I've altered it a smidgen and the Pokeball I did completely free hand.

Pattern I used can be found here on Ravelry. It's free!

I followed it for about the first few rounds. I was not fond of how pointy the pattern made the star look so, I simply altered the pattern by changing the dc 3, c3, dc3 at the peaks down to 2s.

When I got towards the end, I decided to experiment and make extra peaks and it actually turned out looking all nice and even!

The eyes were a debate for a bit. I wasn't sure if I wanted to knit, crochet or make special buttons out of polymer clay. In the end, I decided to go with black felt and white fabric paint then sewed it on with a needle and thread.

This one was pretty fun to make until I got towards the green stripe. It ended up taking forever and ate up a lot of yarn for one row alone. I also ended up taking it apart and restarting more times than I can count. In the end though, I think it turned out looking pretty good. My original plan was to make the background a solid color, like the first one, but because I was low on gray, I decided to add colors to represent the basic element types.

 I am currently working on a second one with lots of altercations and writing the pattern as I go along. I am hoping to post it sometime in the near future.